EDITORIAL: Potential voting precinct merger spotlights deeper problem

If you picked up a copy of Saturday's Star, or visited shelbystar.com in recent days, you may have come across an article about the potential closing of a few voting sites in Shelby.

The issue isn't all that uncommon in Cleveland County or North Carolina.

And, in the wake of our recent community picnic, the issue hasn't drawn much local attention.

It should. But maybe not for the reasons you think.

It's already drawn the attention of the New York Times. A Times reporter from Atlanta flew up earlier this week to visit Shelby and look into this. Not because we're a unique situation, but to see the affect of that on Small Town America.

If the Cleveland County Board of Elections votes to approve the merger on Wednesday, five voting precincts within the city will become two.

The merger is the fourth for the county, which has already merged eight precincts to four.

Two groups in Cleveland County—the Cleveland County Democratic Party and the Cleveland County NAACP—oppose the merger for different reasons. The CCDP has asked the board to defer the change until the 2016 election out of concerns the change will hinder some voters from casting their ballot, cause congestion at entrances to polling places, or cause long waits for voters.

The NAACP is concerned that long waiting lines and voters being uncertain of where to vote would disenfranchise voters.

For the board, Board of Elections Director Dayna Causby said the change is about logistics and more space.

The Shelby 7 precinct is moving regardless of whether the board approves the merger because its current place is undergoing renovations, Causby said.

The proposed change would combine Shelby 6 and Shelby 7 at Holly Oak Park; and would combine Shelby 1, 2 and 3 into one precinct at Shelby City Park.

Currently, Shelby 1 and 2 vote at a fire station with a parking lot not adequate for an Election Day crowd. And, should there be an emergency that requires the firefighters, that would also disrupt voting.

Moving those two precincts to the city park, which is 2.1 miles from the fire department, will make it easy to handle Election Day turnout, Causby said. And both sites are stops for the public transportation Cleveland County TACC system.

The main arguments against the change have been the potential for long lines and disenfranchised voters.

Let's take a look at that for a moment.

In 2010, Cleveland County's general election saw 44 percent turnout. In 2011, it was a mere 15 percent. In 2012, a presidential election year, we saw only 68 percent. Last year, it fell back to 14 percent.

And a sizable portion of those votes, as small as they were, came from early voting.

We would argue long lines won't be an issue even if we had one voting precinct in the city. And we would argue voter disenfranchisement is already here, but not because of the voting process.

Page 2 of 2 - The real story isn't that merging five precincts into two will turn voters away.